Thread by @ElonBachman

1\ This thread presents evidence that $TSLA inflates its delivery numbers by fraudulently re-selling unregistered Lemon returns as "new" to unsuspecting customers, then double counting the delivery. It builds on @quirkyllama's excellent musings here:

blog.quirkyllama.org/2019/03/the-vi…

2\ The story starts in Jan 2018, when $TSLA employee Adam Williams claimed he was fired for objecting to $TSLA's "illegal and/or fraudulent" habit of reselling Lemons. Williams claimed this had been going on since 2016

3\ "Mr Williams was aware of a practice of Defendants involving receiving vehicles designated as "lemons" and..reselling these vehicles without branding the titles..or offering disclosures..as "used" or a "demo/loaner"

h/t @orthereaboot

4\ Before moving on from the Williams suit, note that one of the superiors that Williams complained to was Jerome Guillen, a known @elonmusk favorite who has since been promoted to President, Automotive. Now, let's make some predictions based on Williams' allegations:

5\ We'd expect to see customers complaining about being given "new" cars with suspiciously high mileage. In fact, these complaints have been rampant. Here is one from this week! h/t @scot_work

6\ We'd expect to see many reports of customers returning faulty Model 3s, but few reports of Tesla selling used Model 3s. Regular readers of Model 3 forums will attest to this incongruity.

7\ We'd expect to see $TSLA delaying title registrations so that a Lemon return could be re-sold as new without anyone seeing evidence in a title check. $TSLA has delayed registration even in cases where it has to pay for repeated temp tags.

https://twitter.com/PlugInFUD/status/1092801039751962628

8\ We'd expect to see a persistent gap between deliveries claimed by $TSLA, and titles hitting the NMVTIS database. In Q3 2018, a team of $TSLA sleuths began documenting just such a gap.

https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/1086978076368691202

9\ We'd expect to see periods where the "VIN Gap" never closed, even as time went by. Q3 2018 appears to have been such a period:

https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/1098055285892173824

10\ In periods where $TSLA re-sold many Lemons as "new", dividing new sales revenue by deliveries should give a conspicuously low implied sales price. Voila, Q3 2018 again:

11\ We'd expect $TSLA to favor arrangements where customers could return Lemons "unofficially" rather than by making formal Lemon filings. Behold: the new "7 day free trial"

12\ We'd expect to hear conscientious employees complaining about the fraud. Here is one such complaint, relayed to me by the estimable @Paul_M_Huettner

https://twitter.com/Paul_M_Huettner/status/1103996094344843267

13\ We'd expect to see high turnover among finance, sales, and legal staff:

GC
CFO
Associate GC
Global sales head
GC
VP Legal
CAO
CAO
Treasurer
CFO

dropbox.com/s/doe1755m6gyz…

14\ We'd expect @elonmusk to do what he always does when guilty: stare at the floorboards above where the body is hidden. (h/t @Trumpery45 for the perfect analogy).

Here is Musk on the Q3 call, answering a question nobody asked:

15\ We'd expect $TSLA to be cagey about announcing when they crossed the 200,000 cumulative delivery mark in the US (for IRS purposes). Someone who remembers how that happened in June can chime in here with details.

16\16 Summary: diverse evidence points to $TSLA fraudulently re-selling Lemon returns as "new", and to committing securities fraud by reporting inflated delivery numbers to investors. The evidence comes from employee lawsuits, customer forums, and national title databases. Fin.

I think I mis-represented this particular point. Ignore it.